The present invention relates generally to holders and organizers for items used in the medical and nursing profession. More particularly, the present invention relates to a tray with recesses and depressions defined thereupon for organizing and transporting multiple objects needed for treating, nursing or tending to a patient.
An important factor in a patient's successful convalesce is the nursing process during which prescribed medications should be administered to the patient on time while the patient is consoled and comforted. Most of the time, these tasks fall on the shoulders of the nurses, nurse assistants, attendants and other healthcare staff. However, many healthcare facilities are severely short-handed in nursing staff. While struggling with increasingly complex medication regimens, nurses are often interrupted during their tasks as they answer doctors, family members, pages and telephone calls. If a nurse is on her way toward a patient with a tray full of medications, and she is stopped by a doctor telling her about special treatment needed for another patient, without access to a notepad and a writing instrument, she has to memorize the new information regarding the second patient. In doing so, she might forget what she needs to do with regard to the original patient or even his name, and has to go back to her station to look up that information again. Obviously, this kind of interruptions can give rise to severe consequences when the wrong dosage or medication is administered-with many medications being so potent nowadays, nurses need every bit of help in battling human mistakes, for example, when administering narcotics. Also patients are often in a state where their faculties are compromised to some extent, and with the high turnover rate of both patients and nursing staff, nurses constantly have to check patient identification, often without much help from the patient himself.
Therefore, there is a need, unfulfilled by the current products in the market, for a device or apparatus that helps nursing personnel organize multiple objects needed for tending to a patient that also allows them to go back to what they were doing before they were interrupted and to continue with that original task without making mistakes.
Prior art applications have often focused on organizing medications automatically or according to the time intervals prescribed for taking the medication. Some of them resort to computers and microprocessors. Accordingly, one of the objectives of the present invention is to provide a simple apparatus that helps the nursing personnel in their organization and effort to minimize the chances of making mistakes while remaining inexpensive to manufacture. A further objective is to provide an apparatus that helps with the transport of multiple objects, including multiple fluids, that are needed for tending patients. Another objective is to provide in a nursing tray prefabricated spaces designed to hold medical instruments and containers of various sizes.